Cuomo’s family legacy takes a big hit
Andrew Cuomo always cared about his place in history.
And so, early in his governorship, he invited Robert Caro, a Pulitzer-prize winning biographer and historian of power, for a private audience in Albany, New York. The pitch had been for Caro to share lessons from the legacy of Robert Moses, a master builder who ruthlessly rolled over his opponents to remake New York in the past century.
But over cookies at the Capitol, it quickly became clear that Cuomo would be doing most of the talking. For close to two hours, he spoke admiringly about Moses, outlined his governing philosophy and regaled Caro with his ambitions to build big — overhauling bridges, airports and more. Then the governor politely declared the meeting over.
“It was an arrogant and angering thing to do,” Caro, now 85, recalled in an interview. “To think I had given a day of my life to have him lecture me.”
Imposing his will on others to accommodate his agenda and ambitions has been a hallmark of Cuomo’s career, from his role as chief enforcer for his father, threeterm governor Mario Cuomo, through his own decade-plus reign as New York’s unrelenting chief executive. He trampled lawmakers, lashed his own staff and browbeat political officials in both parties, but often fellow Democrats throughout a steady rise that saw him accumulate power and enemies in almost equal measure.
His strong-arming often worked. Andrew Cuomo pushed through some of the very infrastructure projects he foretold in his talk with Caro, including replacing the
Tappan Zee Bridge and overhauling La Guardia Airport.
For more than 40 years, the Cuomo name has been almost synonymous with Democratic governance in New York, with a Cuomo running for statewide office in every election but one since 1974.
Now, suddenly, it stands for something else.
The first accusation of sexual harassment against Cuomo came in December, then another in late February, and then another, and then calls for investigations and resignations and ultimately, an independent investigation from the office of the state attorney general. The damning final report Aug. 3 corroborated or lent credence to the accounts of 11 women alleging various degrees of harassment and misconduct by Andrew Cuomo, including one accusation of groping.
Facing almost certain impeachment, he announced his resignation Tuesday, even as he denied the harassment claims and any inappropriate touching.
“It’s a stain that’s always going to be there,” said Robert Abrams, who served as New York attorney general while Mario Cuomo was governor.
The accusations and his stepping down, Abrams said, surely would be etched into the opening lines of Andrew Cuomo’s eventual obituary.
It was a fall so swift that observers could be forgiven for alternating between calling it a Greek and a Shakespearean tragedy. An upscale sweater shop that a year ago had hawked “Cuomosexual” and “Cuomo for president” wares now was offering free embroidery to remove that stitching and replace it with “Believe survivors” (or any phrase).
Andrew Cuomo no longer will equal the 12-year tenure served by his late father, whose reputation as an orator and icon of liberalism has forever shadowed his son’s career. The younger Cuomo wore a pair of his late father’s shoes for his third inauguration, and in recent days his aspiration for a fourth term to be the longest-serving Cuomo evaporated.
“I love New York,” he said in his resignation speech Tuesday. “Everything I have ever done has been motivated by that love.”
But where exactly Cuomo’s love of the state ended and his pursuit of power and control began has long been a blurry line. Former advisers have grappled with that question in recent therapy sessions, text chains and over drinks.
“Toxic, hostile, abusive,” Joon Kim, one of the lawyers who led the inquiry, quoted witnesses describing the Andrew Cuomo office culture. “Fear, intimidation, bullying, vindictive.”
In resigning, he said he “didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn” on sexual harassment. He left out that, as governor, he had done some of the redrawing as he signed legislation to impose new protections against sexual harassment. A day after the bill signing, he asked a female state trooper why she did not wear a dress, the report said.
Now the 63-year-old governor is days away from unemployment and still facing criminal investigations into his conduct with women. Federal authorities also have been examining his administration’s handling of nursing home deaths during the pandemic, and the state attorney general is looking into the use of state resources for Andrew Cuomo’s memoir last year.
“I am sure he feels like he has enormous unfinished business left to do,” said Charlie King, Andrew Cuomo’s running mate for lieutenant governor in 2002 and one of the few people who counseled Andrew Cuomo to the end. “And that, more than anything, will stick with him as he closes the gates at Eagle Street and says goodbye to the governor’s mansion.”
Eyeing the History Books
From the start, Andrew Mark Cuomo had a knack for vivid political imagery and a flair for exuding his dominance. He conducted interviews while lighting cigarettes in his office in the 1980s and puffing cigars in a Manhattan park in the early 2000s. Behind the scenes, he was known to shape stories with off-the-record chats.
His first run for office, in 2002, was a flop, when he dropped out of the primary even before getting a chance to match up against Republican Gov. George Pataki, who had ousted his father in 1994.
But he quickly spun a comeback narrative of contrition that propelled him to become attorney general four years later. Successive implosions of Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Gov. David Paterson in scandal put him on a glide path to the governor’s mansion by 2010.
Even before he had won, Andrew Cuomo was eyeing the history books — sending copies of a biography of former Gov. Hugh L. Carey to labor leaders that October. He said he had learned from the hard-charging Spitzer’s mistakes, too.
“Lesson 1 from Spitzer,” Cuomo said then. “Don’t alienate the Legislature on day one.”
It took him a little longer, but by this year, he had precious few friends in Albany.
His winner-take-all approach to politics — with the executive always winning — grew wearisome for legislators as they saw their ideas either repeatedly stomped on or co-opted (and sometimes both).
A centrist, especially on fiscal policy, he triangulated between the parties to curb the most progressive elements of his party.
For years, he had tacitly backed a division among Democrats in Albany, when a breakaway faction of Senate
Democrats formed a powersharing agreement with the Republicans. Andrew Cuomo long claimed he was powerless to reunite the party until he helped broker an accord to do just that in 2018.
Andrew Cuomo had confided earlier that year to Alison Hirsh, then a top political adviser to a powerful union, that he did not want to put the Democrats fully in charge of the Senate before that year’s budget. Hirsh recalled Andrew Cuomo telling her that was because Sen. Liz Krueger, a liberal Manhattan Democrat, would push to increase taxes and that Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Democratic leader, would “give free breakfast to all Black people.” Stewart-Cousins is Black.
Two people confirmed that Hirsh had told them of the governor’s comments at the time; one remembered the verbatim line. Richard Azzopardi, a spokesperson for Andrew Cuomo, denied that the governor said that.
Andrew Cuomo became more emboldened over time. He skipped any galas for his first inauguration in 2011. By 2019, his third inauguration was a resplendent affair, shuttling New York’s political elite by ferry past the Statue of Liberty to hear him speak from the flag-festooned Great Hall of Ellis Island.
Some Andrew Cuomo advisers believe the pandemic heightened his sense of invincibility.
His daily briefings, carried live on cable nationwide, made him a Democratic antidote to President Donald Trump. People close to the governor said he inhaled the coverage, the ratings, the adulation.
He signed a $5.1 million book deal before the pandemic was over. He bantered with his brother, Chris Cuomo, the CNN anchor, on prime time.